| OCR Text |
Show Letter From Denmark Inspired , First Christmas Seal Sale i ! ... i I J I',- --'rfiM.r -i ' ' . Ik- lilt- & I JACOB R IIS 'THE first person in the United States to suggest the use of Christmas Seals to raise money to fight tuberculosis tubercu-losis was Jacob Ri is, the noted author, editor and settlement worker. In au article in the OUTLOOK for July. 1907, lie described a stamp he had received in the mail from a friend in Denmark, where they had been sold to raise money for a hospital for tuberculous children. Riis urged the adoption of the idea ill the United States. This article came to the attention o! Emily Bissell of Wilmington, Delaware, Dela-ware, who decided to use seals as a means of raising money for a similar hospital on the banks of the Brandy-wine Brandy-wine River. She designed the first seal, sold during the Christmas holidays holi-days of 1907. The next year the project became national. After that tuberculosis associations asso-ciations soon were formed in every state and in many cities and towns, until today, as the sale of the 26th Christmas Seal begins, there are 20S4 such tuberculosis associations and committees in the country- And instead in-stead of less than 200 sanatoria, there are now 633. From coast to coast the seal pays for all-year-round local health work, especially among chil- dren, and supports-such projects as clinics, nursing service, preventoria, and other forms of anti-tuberculosis j work. In Jacob Riis' article- he explained i how successful the idea had proved to j be for three years in Denmark. He I said that other "charity" stamps had ! come and gone without finding continuous contin-uous public favor. "1 think I can guess the reason,'' , wrote Riis. "They didn't have the right spokesman. It remained for Hans Christian Andersen's conn trymen to enlist Santa Clans." "What I want to know," continued Riis, "is why we canuot here borrow a leaf from Santa Claus' Danish year book, and do as they have done. Why should we not have a Christmas stamp, printed by a tuberculosis committee, not for the purpose of building a hospital hos-pital let each slate or town build its own but for the purpose of rousing up and educating the people in this most important matter? What might it not mean in revenue to finance the cause that creeps aiong where it ought to run? But, much more than that, what might it not be made to mean as an educating medium in fighting the White Plague? Pra.-tically every man who saw this stamp on a letter, or on a postal-card it is pasted on both in Denmark would want to know what it meant. And when people want to know, half the fight is won. It is because be-cause they do not know a few amazingly amaz-ingly simple things that people die of tuberculosis. "I am pleading for the half-million poor souls all over the land whose faces are set today toward an inevitable inevita-ble grave because of ignorance, heedless heed-less ignorance, and for the friends who grieve with them and for them." Since the above was published, the death rate from tuberculosis in the United States has been reduced almost two-thirds, which means a saving to day of 150,000 lives per year. Despite this fact, one out of every five deaths among persons between 15 and 45 is due to this disease. The war waged with money from Christmas Seals must go on unabated, until tuberculosis tubercu-losis is utterly banished. |
